Pictures
by mediawatchingal
Summary: AU: It's 2014, Sara is looking at pictures of the past.


_Pictures_

Sara sat on the edge of the bed thinking.

_Ten years, can't believe it has been that long…_

She stood up walking through the large bedroom and over to a table with many pictures on and above it on the wall in front of her. Tracing her fingers along the frame of every other one. Remembering things she had forgotten about the man she'd fallen in love with and the life that she had come to live, which seemed like an eternity ago now.

"_It was real Sara, You and Me, It's real…" _

She remembered the day she heard those words, sitting out side on the steps of the church with a man she thought would have been a good friend to her, but that was before he held her face down in a tub, and she tried to strangle him days later on a train to Chicago.

That was the first day she thought maybe she was wrong about that man, that perhaps, _It was real_.

She continued tracing the frames stopping when she came to a picture of a young girl in a yellow dress, sitting in the arms of her father, the picture placed directly next to the same girl, grown up, wrapped in the arms of the man she loves, her in a white dress, him in a black tuxedo, dancing, looking into each other's eyes. Sara darts her eyes back and forth glancing to and from both pictures, wishing the girls father could have been there to see her that happy, safe, and well.

_LJ took that…_

she remembers, _he told them not to look at the camera, to pretend it was just the two of them in the entire world. _

She continues on.

So many memories. Stuffed into little squares.

The picture directly in front of her, on the wall, of the only family she knew now. The three men who she thought the world of, gathered around her smiles on everyone of their faces. The day they all started their lives over, in a world where they were free.

"_You ever think, in another life?" _

In the moment that the news was heard that was the first thing Sara thought of, the words that Michael had said to her so long ago. That maybe it would not have to be another life, maybe it could be this one.

The picture was taken by a friend of Lincoln's father, Sara couldn't remember her name. Just that she was on their side, something that back then she was always very quick to put a face to. Enemy, or friend.

She remembers the headlines all over the newspapers and television,_ 'Lincoln Burrows; Fox River escapee and brother : All Charges Dropped' _They had never imagined such a thing to happen.

Paul Kellerman had stood in court that day and told his entire story in the only truth he knew, how he had followed the orders of Caroline Reynolds, whom was now locked up somewhere in a place no one cared to know about, considered to have committed high treason upon the United States.

Just below that a picture that really does not need to be on the wall, not only because she etched that memory and day into her mind, so that if she forgot everything but one fact, that would be it. But also because it was terrible quality, really a horrible picture of the two of them, neither of them looked incredibly happy, it was taken with a cheap disposable camera she bought for no good reason at all, with money they didn't need to waste. Michael insisted it had to go up, because it was their first. She remembers telling Michael when he asked her why she got the camera and saying that it was just in case they needed it to prove anything.

Looking at the picture of her and Michael she sends her self back to that place again.

_Walking on the rocks over the water of Lake Hudson, what seemed to be the hundredth place she'd been with him in the past week. Lincoln and Kellerman were parked several hundred yards away mapping out the next moves on ward toward DC. They were somewhere in northern Michigan, using Kellerman's idea of heading down through New York to get to DC without being noticed and also not trying to cross any borders. _

_Michael was ahead of her by a few feet, standing on one rock just staring out at the water, she stopped slightly behind him, "Everything okay?" She asked, her hands in the hoodie she had put on again after getting off the train, camera in one pocket string in the other. She heard a quite "Mmm" come from Michael and stepped beside him so that she could see his face. _

_She looks at him a moment, trying to read his thoughts. "There's to much in my head for you to be able to pick me to pieces Doctor Trancredi." he says and turns to face her. A slow grin forming._

"_Well, I can try." Sara says fidgeting with her fingers. Michael takes her hand, "You really think we can get it all back?" Michael doesn't answer her question, instead he starts a new conversation. "Do you ever think about things that happened in Fox River?" he ask her, his eyes on their holding hands. "You mean the things that went wrong there? People getting hurt? The Riot?" _

_He looks away, "that was my fault" he admits. _

"_What was? The Riot?" _

"_It was part of what I needed to do in order to get out. I put you in danger that day Sara, and that's why I came to get you." _

"_You saved me. You lied to me, but you saved me." _

"_Because it was my fault, because I felt responsible, and selfishly, because I needed you."_

"_As part of your plan…" Sara trails off not meaning it as a question, but Michael answers anyway. _

"_Yes" _

"_I don't only think about the things like that happened at Fox River Michael, I think the one question I keep asking my self about the way I feel about you, is what was real about the things that happened between me and you there, what wasn't manipulation?" Sara sighs, and Michael lets go of her hand. There's a few moments of silence between them. _

_Sara speaks first, "It doesn't really matter though does it? There are more important things to settle here than you and me" She begins to walk away, when Michael speaks up. _

"_Be that change you want to see in the world" _

_Sara stops, both their backs turn to each other, she just stares into the woods in front of her. _

"_I can't put a day on it Sara, there wasn't one moment for me were I knew specifically that it changed. I knew I was in trouble when I saw you on those monitors and wanted to help you." Michael laughed to him self slightly and turned to face Sara. _

"_If I had to narrow down to when I knew I was screwed… I was up late one night, about a month into getting to Fox River, I couldn't sleep, nervous thinking about something with plan was going to go wrong. Pacing, laying down on the bunk trying to sleep. Nothing. I held still for moment. Thought of you. It was peaceful." Michael smiled. Looking down at Sara's eyes who were know focused on Michael's feet. _

_He took her hand into his again. Intertwining their fingers. "You have that camera with you?" _

_Sara reached into her pocket with her free hand and pulled out the tiny, cheap, rectangle. "Yeah, why?" She said handing it to him. He pulled her with him as he walked over to a large rock and sat down, bring her down with him._

"_What are you doing?" Sara said slightly laughing, sitting, almost falling, down next to him. _

"_I want to take a picture" Michael responded. _

_Sara looked at him wild eyed with question. "Of what?"_

_Michael looked at the camera rolling the dial until it stopped then looked at Sara. _

"_Us." _

_Leaning into her, both with an optimistic look upon their faces, and the slightest sight of a smile, Michael snapped the picture. _

It was in that moment that she never looked back from being with Michael. Even all the problems that were stirred up when they first got to be like a normal couple. They were different from each other in a lot of ways, but there were ways that complemented the other, and two years after they figured out how to handle the others corks they got married, five years after they had meet. Michael had thought it ironic. Going back to the picture of them dancing she remembered what he said that day.

"_We have known each other for a little over five years, right Sara?" he said spinning her out and then pulling her back into him. _

"_I'd hope you know that since we are married and all now, yes." she returned in a joking matter. _

"_Well, then looks like I really laid it on you thick then" _

"_Excuse me?" Sara asked in a playful tone. _

"_About five years ago, I asked you to wait for me…" Michael looked at the ground pulling her closer to his body. His mouth to her ear, "…And you did." _

Sara turned to look at another picture. The two men staring back at her from the frame, two men whom her world pretty much depended on. Lincoln and Sara had not known much about one another for quite sometime, and it wasn't until about three months after the escape that she learned the importance of Veronica to him.

_After what she thought had felt like an eternity since she had met up with Michael again things got really bad in a matter of moments. Someone had spotted them outside a gas station, and in what seemed like no time at all Mahone was right behind them chasing them down. This wasn't the first time they were really running since Sara came to meet them, it was probably the eighth or ninth. She was starting to lose count, and it was really weighing on her. _

_She was sitting on the pull-out in the motel room they had gotten for that night. Michael was outside with Lincoln and Kellerman, discussing what was next. _

_Lincoln came in and left the other two outside. He could tell she was upset and wanted to find away for her not to be. He felt just as responsible for her pain as Michael did. _

"_Michael's lucky, ya know?" _

"_Hm?" Sara looked up slightly. _

"_He gets to have you here with him. I'll kill him if he takes it for granted that your risking your life to help us." _

_Sara looked up "I'm just doing what I think is right." _

"_A lot of people have died. So I could live…sometimes, I just want to hit Michael because it wasn't worth it"_

"_If he thinks you are, than I'm sure that's the case" Sara responds making sure Lincoln knows he can have meaning in his life again. _

"_There are three people in this world that I would do anything for, I've lost one of them. I have to fight for the other two" _

"_Veronica? Your attorney?" _

_Lincoln looks down. Nods slightly. Then looks back up at Sara. _

"_She was more than that to me for my entire life. If he's the only thing you've got left, run for him. Fight for what's left, that matters to you, not what's gone." Lincoln laid his hand on her wrist, much like he had when he thanked her in Evansville, then stood and walked back out to Michael. _

Coming out of her thoughts Sara hears the door to her bedroom open.

"Mommy?" a little girl about four years old runs in to the room and jumps into Sara's arms.

"Hey Sweetie" Sara snuggles the little girl in her arms.

"Mommy, what are you doing?"

"Look at all these pictures dear" Sara replies, looking into the little girls eyes whom look so much like her fathers.

The little girl reaches out to one and Sara moves closer so that she can pick up the picture she is reaching for.

"I like this one" she tells Sara.

And Sara smiles looking down at the picture she holds in her tiny hands of Michael holding their daughter on the day she was born.

"My favorite too." Sara smiles.

Sara stands there for a moment with her daughter in her arms.

"We have another that can go up there" she sets the girl down. And goes over to the bed kneeling down and reaching under, the child looking over at her wondering what she is doing. She pulls out a new frame and a picture from a box beside the bed.

The picture was of everyone. Sara and Michael with their daughter in their lap. Lincoln, LJ and his fiance sitting next to them all smiling, LJ had just finished grad school and they had a party after graduation.

"I like this one" the little girl says again, running her fingers over the glass in the frame.

"Me, too" Sara replies and hangs the picture on the wall.


End file.
